First responders line the rail of an overpass Saturday to pay tribute to fallen firefighters killed in Wednesday's fire and explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, as their remains are driven to Dallas for post-mortems.

WEST - The fires of hell were about to rain down on this close-knit farm community, and only a handful of folks knew what was about to happen.

Dr. George Smith was one of them. The city's medical director and medical director of West Rest Haven, the local nursing home, he always kept a radio scanner turned on at home.

An urgent message was broadcast about a fire at the West Fertilizer plant.

His first thought was about the 127 residents at the home, which sat across the railroad tracks from the plant.

A two-story apartment complex was the only buffer between the home and the plant.

Smith rushed to the scene and had staff turn off the facility's air conditioning and stuff wet towels under the doors. Residents were moved to the side of the building farthest from the plant.

The plan called for the use of school buses to evacuate the nursing home's residents.

"It was going to be the right option," the doctor said, "until it blew up. We weren't planning on an explosion."

Across the street and around the corner, Jerome Lednicky Jr. looked through the window of his house and saw the smoke.

The CEO of State National Bank and his wife, Lucille, live 500 yards - across a baseball field and a narrow stretch of railroad right of way - from the plant.

Lednicky first assumed the flames were from a house fire, but decided to go out to make sure.

"I went outside and saw that the plant was on fire," he said. "I walked back into the house and told my wife 'Let's go.' "

"I knew what they had over there," he said. "The first thing I thought about was ammonium nitrate," which he knew had been used to blow up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Lednicky realized they had very little time. His wife dropped what she was doing. He didn't bother to change clothes.

"I wasn't wearing socks," he said. "I was wearing some old fishing shoes. I didn't have a belt on."

Calmly but briskly, they made their way toward Lucille's 2008 Expedition, parked in the driveway. They got in and drove south, toward the home of their daughter on the other side of town.

They'd gone about a mile when the plant blew.

No phones, no radio

Back at the nursing home, Dr. Smith had found himself buried under a pile of rubble. He was injured, with blood dripping from cuts on his face and back, but crawled out and started an evacuation.

All of the radios and phones at the nursing home had been knocked out. Smith ran outside to a medical helicopter that had already been called when the fire broke out.

He used that radio to tell first responder agencies what had happened.

"I told them to get everybody they have, that it was a major, major disaster."

By that time, the rest of West already knew something horrible had taken place.

The blast was felt all over town. At Greg May Chevrolet, Winslo Lopez was working late to finish a financing deal. He, his brother and the customer were the only ones in the showroom.

The first explosion sounded like thunder, he said, so they got up to see if it was raining.

"But before we could get up, the second explosion came," he said. "The windows rattled, picture frames fell over; we felt the force to our core. The first thing that came to mind was, it's either a tornado or something like Boston."

Two miles farther out from the car dealership, Deana Laubert and her husband, Richard, immediately knew something bad had happened.

"We heard the explosion," she said. "I told my husband, 'That's not thunder.' You could feel it in your bones."

Within minutes of emerging from the debris, Dr. Smith - still bleeding - had organized an ad hoc evacuation of the nursing home's residents.

Members of the staff and first responders were joined by neighbors in rolling nursing home residents to safety in wheelchairs.

The first plan was to take them to the high school football field.

Still too close for safety

Matt Cawthon, chief deputy with the McLennan County Sheriff's Office, was greeted at the field by a scene of chaos.

"There were a lot of volunteers, and I heard a lot of screaming from the injured old folks, who were very confused," Cawthon said. "I walked to the east, toward the plant, and it looked like there had been a missile attack."

Burglar alarms pierced the smoke hanging in the air, and fire sprinklers were going off inside the apartments and nursing home, he said. Metal garage doors were wrapped around vehicles. Fires sporadically sparked amid the damaged homes.

Then the decision was made that the field wasn't safe. Evacuees already there had to be moved again, this time to a gymnasium nearby.

But the door of the gym was too badly damaged to open. The patients in wheelchairs were moved to the building's parking lot instead.

A handful of residents were still at the home, at a safe distance, because they were too ill or weak to be moved. They would later be taken by ambulance to safety.

Smith said one resident, severely injured in the blast, died before he could be rolled to safety

"He was very elderly and pretty sick to begin with," the doctor said. "But I'd like to think that I was able to save some lives."

Plant a major presence

In the days after the blast, townspeople were still coming to grips with what happened.

Like nearly everyone in town, Billy and Doris Pavelka grew up with the plant as a major presence.

"It's been here longer than the houses," Doris Pavelka said. "We were raised here. We live here. It's a farming community and it makes fertilizer for farmers. It's part of the community."

Lednicky was never worried about the facility.

"My main concern has always been the railroad tracks," the banker said. "They carry all sorts of chemicals on tank cars and they go right through the middle of town. If they had ever had a derailment, it could wipe out the town."